We are all in this traditional way for a reason; I for one just feel a need to be simple and I truly love the "nostalgia" that surrounds traditional archery; I hate to see how "modern" our hunting has become; I am not totally against some advancements but the shows and media of today are focused on the wrong things;
So in your own words express your meaning on what traditional archery and hunting mean to you; thank you
:campfire:
so it is NEVER forgotten and to insure the youth of today can participate in something so honest and pure.
Takes me back to simpler times.
Simple is better!
It is not important to me to connect with the past, I just enjoy shooting my recurve more than a compound.
The present is ever changing,the past has already been proven,tried and true works for me.
I got tired of the modern contraptions & wanted to go back to my beginnings, not sure if I do connect to the past but I do think I should have been born a few hundred years ago.
I would go along with what adkmountainken said. It seems to give me a feeling of returning or 'connecting' to simpler times.
Simple is better! I am old enough to remember the past I used the stick and string prior to the steering wheels and sights.(compound). I used one for a couple of years and quickly switched to the recurve and longbow. Since retiring Simple is better,shooting everyday is better,living in the country is better,friends on Tradgang priceless.
Maxx
"In your own words, why is it so important to connect with the past"
Because the future doesn't look to good.
Honestly, I have never liked the use of technology. Not in a Ted Kazinski kind of way, just that the tried and true results have work for thousands of years, so why try cheating yourself and take the easy way out. Howard Hill didn't call his book The grab your latest electronic gadget and bow with a trigger for a good reason. He called it Hunting the Hard Way. Yes it's hard, but to me it's more fun.
As for now, I can afford to put food on the table, so being "successful" while hunting takes a back seat. It's about being outside, and especially doing it with my kids.
My dad was an archer since the late 40's and a charter member of our local bow club in 1958 and my early memories of him with a bow were with a 55' bear kodiak. That "image" of him with a recurve has stuck with me since I was but a lad and the lure of a recurve, (and to a lesser extent), a longbow is what personally floats my boat. I love the challenge and the outright asthetic appeal of traditional bows. Cant get enough....jackdaw
It takes me back to my child hood.
I don't know why or even if I feel the need to connect to the past. What I do know is that something deep in my soul is satisfied whenever I pick up my bow and go hunting or I wander through the wilds collecting bow wood and arrow shaft material.
It's not only a connection to our past it's a connection to our creator God almighty.
In 1958, they put a kids bow and arrow set in my hands, I am now learning what I used to do naturally. So I guess I am connecting with my past, and like the other guys have already said, I'm all teched out, I need something very simple. I shot by myself for 16 years and have only just got back into Trad. I'm happy to say I got back into it before I knew about the Rondys and 3-D shoots, and the forums, this is just the icing on the cake.
QuoteIt's not only a connection to our past it's a connection to our creator God almighty.
Shouldn't need a weapon to do that. ;-)
I like the older gear because it keeps me in tune with simler times and presents a challenge I can test myself against.
Because it is fun and I like it. Watching a arrow fly out of a compound is nothing compared to watching it arch out of my recurve - I never get tired of it.
It takes me back to the far simpler and more joyful days of yesteryear.
A feeling of solitude and independence that I would really like to experience once again.
Just me, a boundless sky, endless stands of Ponderosa pine and small streams with native trout.
No established camprgrounds, no portable boom boxes, no loud and obnoxious party types.
I am packing now to go spend several weeks in the Gila Wilderness of New Mexico.
Charles.
I started on traditional as a kid. Then went to a wheel bow and that was fun and expensive. All the gadgets that made the bow shoot like a rifle. There was no challenge, I hit where the bright dot was. Now I have a bow from **** and things are less expensive. I am in the process of making a bow from black walnut. Cheaper still, I already had most of the tools (yes power tools), but I'm using a draw knife to do most of the work(and I do mean work)
I started with a recureve went to compounds as teen. Shot compounds till I was 25 then switched back that was in 95. I truly beleave it is the best weapon for bow hunting and thats why I shot traditional. Just hope all the compound shooters never figure it out! I love finely hand crafted equipment so it fits me well.
I don't think there is anything that makes me feel better than shooting my Longbows and Recurves. I am taken back to a time that seems to be simpler. The flight of a wood arrow from the bow is absoulutly one of the finest sights there is.
Joe
Enjoying all the parts of traditional archery. The bows, the making of arrows, the tuning process, shooting my bows, and the people. Everything is in the package that is a major part of me and has been for a very long time.
Barry,Your words summed it up about right,plus it takes me back to my early years where things were differant with real valus.
I just find it amazing to hunt with basically the same equipment as all the primitive cultures did for thousands of years and still today in remote places in our world.
Charlie. That's how that was meant.
For me it is a walk with my ancestors. It is more personal for me to be one on one with the bow, and not have aids to be proficient. The challenage is greater for me to hunt/shoot more with just the body and the surroundings telling me it is right and be able to see the shot, rather than just making a shot.
K I S S
To connect with myself, not the past..
One of my students (a new convert to the longbow) said it this way.. "I love the feel of the bow. It's just me, a stick and a string. When the arrow goes where I look, it was "ME" who put it there not a bunch of gadgets."
Modern manufactured longbows and recurves are much better today than they were 50 years ago and the same could be said for the bow and arrows fifty years before those. However, shooting them, making my own strings and arrows, sharpening my new modern stainless steel broadheads, etc. make the whole trad bowhunting thing more personal and rewarding. It isn't so much staying connected with my past as remembering it. We have come aways, since then and most of it has been good. Knowing where I was 50 years ago keeps today in perspective.
Changes/improvements in materials, designs and opportunities have not changed attitude. I know for sure that if archers I knew in the 50's could have gotten ahold of what we now have in their future...they would have thought they died and went to heaven. It's the attitude and challenge of bowhunting with trad gear that hasn't changed.
Most of what we think is new, is actually the old revisited.. Interesting that when reading the history of old broadheads, most of their inventors did so because they couldn't find one on the market that was adequate.. However most all of those have fallen by the way side years ago. Yet we keep coming out with "new and improved." A precious few are, but most are, just as the old ones..and they too will fall by the way side..
Today as we remember our fallen freedom providers it is good to know the trails our archery forefathers traveled to get us where we are today.
In the last 100 years the basic stick bow has survived two major attempts to put it by the way side too.. Gun powder in the early 1900's and the wheel bow in our times..
The hearts of a few in the early 1900's kept it alive, until the likes of Fred, Ben, Howard,and a few others gave it a jump start in the mid century.
Now we can lay claim to keeping it alive in the face of advanced technology.
It's always good to know where you come from, it makes it easier to know where you are going.
I get a strong connection with the past as hunting with traditional equipment requires me to use good, solid, basic hunting skills that were taught to me by my grandfather. Always watch the wind, move slower than slow, and keep your eyes moving ahead for any movement or anything odd or out of place. And when I get busted or blow a stalk or watch "flags" waving bye bye its because I ignored one of those three. Combine that with the KISS method and it makes me a happy camper.
I get the same feeling of exitement and adventure that so easily gets lost in this age of gadgets and gear driven hunting industry. I feel 10 years old again when afield with my longbow.
This is the sort of question one should think twice about before asking a writer ... :scared:
Connection. Truth. Simplicity.
I like a reasonable shot at being as good at something so vital as hunting as someone on the same ground 18,000 years ago. True, I'm using Fastflite string and razor sharp broadheads and carbon arrows, but 20 yards is 20 yards.
I like seeing a mule deer crossing the highway in front of me and seeing "food" not "Bambi." And thinking of food walking around basically happy and free and not being shrink wrapped on styrofoam after a short miserable life in a feedlot or confinement shed.
I like eating venison and reliving that day, how hot it was, what it smelled like, the wet thwack of the arrow, how hard my heart was pounding, how I felt, that horrible doubt of a miss suppressed, that awful wait when you really want to run,run, run after it, the equal measures of regret and elation and thankfulness all happening at the same time when I walk up on it. And I like knowing that the only really honest way I have to interact with those beautiful animals is to kill and eat them. (And work hard to protect them from the less honest, less direct ways we interact with them.)
It's important for me to realize that I am an animal and that for me to keep living, something has got to die. It is important to see that for what it really is, all its beauty and savagery. It's not always easy to see what died when I open that can of green beans, and no, I'm not talking about the green beans as much as the brutalized ground it came out of.
I do enjoy the spectacle of Lady Gaga or Las Vegas or a Harley but I need to be able to see that they are affectations and illusions. They are unreliable as compasses and not nutritional as part of a steady diet.
You really can think that arrow to its mark. You really can get close to animals designed specifically to prevent you from doing that. Even in this day where the lights are so fake and the noise is so weird and the colors so unreal, you really can see through all of it and be the animal in the world you are.
This is easy....it keeps the hunt in hunting and the arch in archery!! :wavey:
An interesting question, with thoughtful answers.
As others have said, for me it is a way to connect with the past. It gives me a chance to better understand the longbowman of the Middle Ages and the native hunter of the Stone Age.
It brings out the wildness in us, and allows us to enjoy the wildness of nature. It is when we are truly free.
" if you don't know where you came from, how do you know where you are going "......it's just keeping that connection that is important to me...... :campfire:
Those who come to a forum such as this KNOW how much dedication goes into what we do. We know the hero shots that show up on here are backed up with genuine personal effort.
There are many shortcuts that can be taken to achieve the same results, but we choose to "connect" with the past and do it without the shortcuts.
We rely on ourselves not the latest gadget.
My first bowhunt occured at the age of twelve, in 1978. Back then, a deer felled with an arrow was a rare and revered event. ANY DEER!
By staying connected, we hold on to the romance and the honor. By staying connected, it is indeed about the hunt and not the kill.
It is important to remember the past so that when the present and future are so screwd up we have something to look back on to guide us.
John
A bow and arrow, much like an axe, a campfire, a hot cup of tea, or the smile on a child's face, reminds me of what counts in life; the simple pleasures.
Our memories are part of what we are. I can well remember hunting with a recurve bow as a boy in the 60's & 70's. I was absent from bowhunting for 25 years or so but those memories rekindled are the reason I've taken up hunting with a recurve once again. It's a simple, time proven method that works. While I've owned most of the excellent,currently built, big name bows, I prefer to shoot old bows from that era.
If you need to kill game grab your rifle, I still do. I have even more nostalgia with firearms. But nothing is more enjoyable than hunting with an old-style bow.
It's where we ALL CAME FROM!
If you don't know/or forget where you've been. You cannot make a good choce of where your going to go.
Being connected to the past provides to key items.
1. You know what works; and revisiting the past can remind you of what works when things are off kilter. Sometimes we only look back over the past week of shooting to find out what we did only days ago that was working so well. Someytimes we need to look back before our own time and see what was working then that we need to re-implement at present.
2. We know what doesn't work as a result of past failures,or embarassments. I'll save the diatride and say that its nearly the same type of retrospective thinking as point #1.
In fact #1 is what I think brought me to the trad way 5-6 years ago. The wheels had started to become the focus of the hunt for me. The wheels, the insane accuracy, the tweaking, the gadgets etc... A stickbow takes all of the equipment distractions away and lets me focus on the hunt again, whic is why I started in the 1st place.
B
Its just fun to me.RC
To me archery is suppose to be a primitive sport, using a wheelie device just has no appeal for me. One day soon i hope to try building my own selfbow. :archer2:
I shoot bows to hunt. I love to shoot my recurves and do almost every day. I imagine without hunting I wouldn'te be an archer. I write this because I consider these days I'm living in to be the best of times, at least in the past 175 years or so. Wildlife regulation and management have recovered most of our mistakes of overharvest and market shooting our ancestors conducted.
I'd like to say I live for today but in reality I'm always thinking to the next season or, during the hunting season, my next hunt.
My love for archery, and recurves in particular, has nothing to do with the past for me. My first recurves don't compare to the beautiful work of today's modern bowyers.
Jumped to the end. I don't want to live in the past. Its not about the past for me, its just about what feels right. Seems what feels right to me is very similar in a lot of ways to what felt right "back then".
I am not into the competition, the need to show off, the need to get one no matter what. I am into the feeling it gives me to be out and about. That's all.
ChuckC
I have no trad background, just the usual weaponry and compounds, so no nostalgia. When I think of traditional I am looking to the future. It is relaxing, fun, a challenge, a hobby, and something I can see doing with my girls. And although I happen to think it will make for some intense low light, dense cover deer hunting, it is the first weapon that I don't intend to use as only a hunting tool.
The wind continues to blow directly into your the face as the years pass you by. Look within and sieze the moment. Reaching to connect and fulling immersing myself while striving for that perfect shot execution and becoming a part of the mystical flight of the arrow has been fully realized thru this traditional art. No more greater endeavor nor other extraordinary experience has touch me and provides the fulfillment as the stick and string. For some day, I hope to procalim, we are one.
Hunting is an integral part rooted firmly within me , has left its indelible mark and engulfs me at times like an alert and ravenous predator. There is no longer the chronic craving need to harvest an animal, but the desire to be intimately close and well within range, with bow in hand, for the fire burns deep. My prey has received the greatest honor by giving up its life to our traditonal way,
I can say very honestly that I feel no connection to the past in how I hunt today. I have no desire to collect old bows, or hunt with them. I see old equipment as "interesting", but I don't revere it in any form. I know the history of our sport, but I'm not drawn to it in any way. I have no desire to replicate the past or do it the way our forefathers did it. I have long stated that I use (by the definition of many) "traditional" equipment, but I don't think of myself as a traditional bowhunter. I think of myself as a hunter, and one who likes to use a bow.
I choose my equipment, and hunt with it because I am the happiest with how it performs for me. I'm out there to hunt...and maybe kill something. I like a good challenge. I like knowing I can slip to within 5 yards of a bedded whitetail, caribou or black bear and kill them in their bed with an uncomplicated weapon.
Beating the animal at his own game is what I live for. The bow and arrow is my simple implement to make the kill.
I like connecting with my personal past, shooting traditional equipment (recurves) as a boy and into my teens.
I am enjoying the added challenge of preparing to hunt with a longbow instead of compounds, not that the latter hasn't been a lot of fun, and more satisfying to me than hunting with firearms. I like the woods to be quiet when I hunt, so I like to be quiet when I shoot.
Perhaps some of us want to connect with a fictional past as well; I wanted to shoot a longbow instead of recurves just to get in touch with my inner Robin Hood.
To me it's not about the past, but the present. It's what I enjoy doing.
Simpler times when a man was a man! I enjoy it because the world as it is now is a big race...run...run...run..hurry up I'm going to be late!...I often feel I was born a hundred or so years to late...this is why I like traditional archery!
It's where it all started for mankind, the first modern weapon. Mankind has used the bow for tens of thousands of years. The cave drawings in spain show humans using a longbow to hunt and survive not a rifle or compound. If it hadn't been for the invention of the bow we don't know how mankind would have turned out. From native americans to african tribes to the jungles in south america it has been used and is still in use as a way to survive and hunt in parts of the world. It has won major battles in conflict such as the battle of crecy in france, and was up until the invention of gunpowder and cannon, the modern warfare weapon. So to me mankind owes much of it's existance to the bow, and for that reason we need to keep traditional archery alive so we don't forget our past and where we all came from. Plus it's more fun and a challenge to live like our ancestors.
I love shooting the longbow.It's honest,uncomplicated, and makes me feel a part of the natural way of things.That's the best I way I can put it.
I'm cheap and like to make my own stuff. Never got the timing down on a homemade wheelbow :)
After many years shooting competitivly with compound I just want to fling arrows for fun. I went full circle to where I was as a kid.. love it !!!
Scott
I don't live in the past, but I do like the hard earned reward of taking game with the stickbow. There is a lot of personal pride built into every shot taken during a summer's worth of practice. Modern equipment takes too many short cuts to get to the same reward and as a result removes a lot of the spirit of the hunt.
You can't connect with the past. Its gone. You can only connect with interpretaions of it.
My interpretation is that the "ancient ones" used archery to survive (for food & warfare). Ironically, I believe they would have used compounds or firearms if they had been available at the time.
I shoot trad archery in the present, because I find it more fun and more sporting. Even a crappy rifle will outshoot the most high-tech, hologram sighted, whisker bicuit equipped compound, so what's the point? These things were created to game the system, so "sportsmen" could get better hunting opportunities with minimal handicap and "the industry" could make money. Technology makes bowhunting easier, but if you want easier, why not use a rifle? - John
Its simple ! There are plenty of other complicated things in our lives today. I have no idea how use 80% of the functions on my cell phone . I spend enough time daily using complicated equipment and instruments . WHY would I want to spend countless hours OF MY TIME making my leisure and my favorite pastime( HUNTING ) any more complicated than it has to be .
I have ONE worry to contend with while hunting , that is "will the bow string break" ? That is the worst possible scenario . I have another string with me THAT I MADE MY SELF so NO WORRIES !!! again SIMPLE
I'm not trying to "connect" with the past, I'm just keeping it simple with what I love to do.
without the past you lose sight of the future.
Thats why I stay connected to the trad archery lifestyle. I want to keep the spirit of hunting the right way around for my children to see. I dont want them to get caught up in the posed picture, advertising, big buck crazy. I want them to slow down and enjoy themselves in the woods, to learn from nature and what it has to offer, not only physically but mentally as well.
Shouldn't this topic be discussed with smoke signals? ;)